The Long Road Home
by letscallitink
Summary: A reunion!fix-it!fic of epic proportions. The Moment decides to go back and make up for a mistake. Instead of using Rose Tyler's form, she actually brings Rose Tyler through the universes to help the Doctor. But the reunion won't be that simple, and Rose will have to take the long road back to her proper time and place at the Doctor's side.
1. A Most Beautiful Death

**Finally. The rewrite cometh. Huge thanks to:** **gemava** **,** **LovelyAmberLight** **,** **ISolemnlySwearToManageMischief** **,** **vulcanhuntress** **, and** **fandommaniac22** **, for helping me get this story whipped into shape.**

 **I'm writing this because, above all things, I ship Rose and the Doctor. Also, Multi-Era Doctor is my guilty pleasure.**

 **None of the DW books or Big Finish Audio Dramas are going to be included in this story as canon. This is, firstly, because I can't keep track of every single non-series piece of information, and secondly because there were some things in a few of the books and audios that I thought were completely wrong and ridiculous and basically just the fanfiction-esque wishes of the writers who thought they could get away with it because it wasn't on TV. So, if you read something and think, 'Hey, wait, what about that time in** ** _The Stone Rose_** **when such-and-such-thing happened?' Well, it didn't happen. Just keep that in mind, and we will all be happy.**

 **The Doctor is an alien and for once we are going to acknowledge that he is an alien, because I am a student of anthropology and he is presented as far too human for me to accept. Still gonna remain relatively canon-compliant, just… be prepared. The Doctor is going to show his alien in this fic.**

 **Also, if you're here for smut, you may turn back now, because there won't be any.** ** _Any_** **.**

 **The One and Only Disclaimer: "I'm on my computer."** ** _"You are."_** **"I'm writing fanfiction."** ** _"Yep."_** **"I could own anything."** ** _"… No."_**

 **ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo**

 **Chapter One: A Most Beautiful Death**

 **ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo**

John Tyler died of old age, in the comfort of his home, with his wife at his side. It had been the deepest hour of a star-gilded night, and she had opened the windows for him. He died with stars in his eyes and her hand in his.

It was a beautiful death; one of the most beautiful deaths that the Moment had ever seen in her whole existence (which was significant, and she had been around long enough to has an extensive sampling of all sorts of death, terrible and beautiful and inevitable). But that death, as beautiful as it was, left Rose Tyler behind to fade after her husband. She wasn't the fading sort, really, but at her age… well, fading was just too easy.

The Moment had been around for a lot longer than anyone really knew. She was not, as some might assume, a developed sentience. _Nothing_ was a _developed sentience_ , actually. One either is or is not sentient, always has been and always will be. Sentience is not a matter of development, and certainly not something that can be measured and judged. But the point is that the sentient entity that was the Moment was quite very young, but still older than anyone believed her to be. It was not a matter of not being sentient, but a matter of not being _awake_. When she finally woke up, she pitched a rather unpleasant fit about the way she was being used, and everyone _–pretentious Time Lords–_ assumed that it was at that point that she became self-aware, or at least in possession of a conscience.

(They were wrong, the pompous morons.)

With all time and all manner of forms to choose from, the Moment chose Rose Tyler's form for the Doctor's sake.

The real Rose Tyler had been, at that time, a universe away, living her life with the man who called himself John Noble, and then John Tyler when he married her, because he thought that was fair to take her name – his favorite – instead of changing hers with his false one. They were brilliant, the Moment saw, and she left them in peace to be brilliant together. She took Rose Tyler's face and voice and used them while she could, and that was good enough. It had been a beautiful experience, if not a bit sad.

It all worked out rather nicely, the Moment liked to think. The Doctor regenerated, met Rose, fell in love with Rose, regenerated again, kept on loving Rose. It was lovely (he was a bit of a git about it, but he was lovely). But then he lost Rose. The Moment hadn't seen a real problem (not beyond the extreme emotional turmoil, but that's a given), not at the time. Rose would be happy with John and the Doctor would recover. But then time went on and on.

John died his beautiful death. Rose faded to death without him. That was disappointing, not the bright and shining end they perhaps deserved, but one that was expected. It was life and death and time, and what more could one expect for mortal beings? Rose lived and died very well. Rage, rage, against the dying of the light, was that not what the humans said? Rose did that. She accepted death with dignity and a sort of relief, but she stood strong to the very end even as her life force drained and faded. That, alone, the Moment could have stood for. It happened all the time to both the best and worst of people, just like anything else. Everything had its time and everything died. Her personal attachment to Rose Tyler could not interfere with time and tide.

The Doctor lived on. He married a woman he cared for and loved but was not _in love with_ , and that was fine too, if not somewhat disturbing. They helped each other survive hardship, and that's the whole point of marriage, even if it wasn't a real marriage. But the Doctor regenerated again and again and again. He saved and lost and regretted and loved and hated and traveled. He kept living and reviving and lasting and stretching his existence across time until he eventually stretched too thin and too far and he broke and died for the final time.

The Moment did not like the outcome. She did not like it at all.

She lived in a way that let her hear the Doctor's hearts and mind _screaming_ for what was lost, for happiness torn away with all the cold burning of stars on his flesh, and it nearly drove her mad.

She turned her attention away from the Doctor and looked to Rose Tyler's last days. They were not good days, but they were not bad ones. They were tired and content in the way that can only happen when one very old person fades from a life well-lived. They were beautiful, painful days that Rose Tyler lived through admirably, as well as she could. _(But they could be better.)_

 **oooOOOooo**

The grief was not what Rose expected it to be. She had thought it would be the same intense, piercing, _throbbing_ ache that had crippled her when she lost the Doctor, but it was not. It was not nearly so all-encompassing. This grief was more like a hand holding her heart, and every so often, it would clench down unbearably, only to release her again, bruised and bleeding. The cold fingers of it would stab like talons at her insides, and the wounds would turn hot and burn until she cried, only to settle until they felt like weeping sores under her ribs. It would sneak up on her, clutch at her neck and try to drag all the air out of her while she was doing the dishes or making the bed. Like a harsh winter wind, it washed over her one moment and was gone the next, leaving her chilled and shivering in its wake.

That was the grief she felt for John.

There was a funeral almost immediately after John's death. Rose said no and Head Director Yang Lei said yes.

John had hated funerals and made it clear, more than once, that he didn't want a funeral to take place when he died. He said that, if they had to do anything, there should be a party. _Get together, eat good food, tell great stories, celebrate that I lived and lived well._ That was what he wanted.

That was not what happened. There was no party. There were three hours of murky grey weather and black-clad weeping that made Rose want to fidget and tear at her dark widow's clothes and _crawl out of her skin_. Yang Lei, the Head Director who had taken over after Jack's death, had demanded it take place. She could've slapped him for it, but she knew he was only trying his best. Yang Lei wasn't one of her and John's trainees. He didn't understand. He didn't know how much John hated funerals, and it didn't matter how Rose explained it, either. What he understood was that Torchwood had an image to uphold and that John was famous. Standards had to be kept. As he was relatively new to his position, he couldn't risk calling the funeral off and telling everyone to stick it. Not like Pete or Jack would've.

Rose hadn't the heart to protest further.

They lowered a casket into the ground (a flowery and unnecessary expense for the sake of looking good; John had been cremated). Flowers were thrown, damp dirt was tossed, silence was held. Rose snarled at the mud. Someone, mistaking the sound for a sob, gave her a consoling pat on the back.

 _Why would you do this? This isn't what he wanted. You know it's not. He said no. I said no. Why would you do this?_

To keep Torchwood respectable, whether it went against John's wishes or not. That was why they did it. Looking at the big picture made that seem perfectly fair. Rose got how it was– John was dead and Torchwood was still here. It wasn't like Rose couldn't chew out everybody in the Public Relations office later, not to mention the tongue lashing she would give to Yang Lei. Maybe it wasn't really his fault, but she would tell him off for it anyway.

It was alright, Rose reminded herself. The funeral wasn't for John. The funeral was for everyone else. The people who loved John the most were all dead, other than Rose herself, so what did it matter? No party would take place, nor any memorial. Those who felt grief _would_ grieve, each in their own way. The funeral was ultimately irrelevant.

But it still seemed like such a slap in the face.

Rose wanted to get angry, but they wouldn't let her, because that sort of thing wasn't good for her heart. They wanted to preserve her, a relic from another universe, and smother her in formaldehyde so that she wouldn't wither away. She didn't want to live like that. That wasn't living at all.

She didn't want to die, but she didn't want to live like this.

She wanted to run through the rain and mud and cast off those black, stifling funeral clothes. She wanted to tell everybody who had shown up to that bloody funeral that they didn't know anything, that they didn't know John, that they were might as well have spat on his grave, to have made his memory this _sick, morbid joke_. She wanted to scream at the sky. She wanted to _howl_.

The people around her mostly kept their heads bowed, but she felt their eyes on her. She had put her foot down at making a speech, but they still looked at her like they expected her to say something. Say what? _My husband's dead and you're all disrespecting his memory by doing the one thing he didn't want you to do? And, to top it off, you made me go along with it?_ No, Rose had the feeling that wouldn't go over well. So she said nothing. She only tugged and itched at her black clothes, clenched her toes in her pinching shoes, and tried to breathe even though she felt like she was gagged and bound, but she didn't say a single word.

A moment flickered up in her memory, a shadowy echo of her own voice – she had gotten angry at… someone. She was with her first Doctor, she remembered, and she had gotten so angry at… Charles Dickens? Had she yelled at Charles Dickens? Blimey. Oh, no, wait, it hadn't been Charlie. It had been the girl's master. The one in the funeral home, or was it a morgue? What was his name? What was the _girl's_ name? It had been so long. She had only been nineteen then.

Nineteen, and she hadn't put up with some nasty comment from the master of a funeral home or morgue or whatever. (The girl's name, it had been Gwen; she saved the world and no one ever knew.)

Ninety-six years old, and she was letting them do this to her. To her husband.

 _Enough._

She wouldn't even stand there. This wasn't what she wanted for John, nor would it be something John approved of. John had specifically said he didn't want a funeral, and even if he hadn't said that, he had always made it know that he thought funerals were sad and depressing and certainly no way to give someone a proper goodbye. But Torchwood had insisted. Torchwood, bloody Torchwood. She and John had dedicated seventy years of service to _Torchwood_ , and this was how they were repaid? This was their reward? Well, if Torchwood wanted her husband to have a public funeral, that was their business and she couldn't stop them, but they couldn't make her go along with it.

She would not go along with any of this.

Rose left the funeral without a word to anyone, hobbling along with pains in her back and her knees and her ankles (and everything, why did getting old have to make simple things so painful?), ignoring how people called after her, and hailed a cab.

It was sort of a relief as she slid into the worn leather seats and snapped her address at the cabbie. The cramped space actually made her comfortable, secure. She watched the raindrops race each other down the window until the cab pulled to a stop. (John loved racing the raindrops.)

The driver was nice enough to ask her if she was alright and if she needed help. Rose had enough patience and appreciation for his kindness to say _no, thank you_ and pay him generously more than she needed to.

The world blurred and she fled inward, towards the center of what she knew in this world. Mud. Cracked concrete. Rickety stairs. A blue door with a chrome doorknob. Home.

Her modest house was a haven from the world. It was small and not at all posh, but it was cozy. No gourmet meals would ever be made in a kitchen so cramped, and a twin-sized bed was already too big for the single bedroom, but Rose didn't care. Nights in this flat meant eating warm chips out of a paper bag or Chinese take away and curling up in a heap of blankets for the night. She and John had done that together too many times to count. John... John had left funny little odds and ends around, wires and gears and screws and little bits of thing-a-ma-jigs. Rose didn't know what half of them were for, and the rest were actually of alien origin. She left them as they were, leaving as many _John-things_ to stay unchanged in his absence as she could.

Rose shed her wet coat and hat onto the tile floor of the entryway. They fell with heavy _splats_. Puddles immediately formed. Uncomfortable black shoes that rubbed bunions were carelessly kicked away. Earrings that pinched were unclipped and set on the tea tray by the chair. Rose shimmied halfway out of her dress and the remembered that, at the age of ninety-seven, it was nearly as difficult to shimmy as it was to run.

She violently pulled herself free of it. It hurt her body to move like that, to jerk, but she had to. She had to get it off. Fabric was rent and buttons were loosened. She didn't care. She never wanted to see that dress again. She wouldn't be going to another funeral anyway.

Stockings. Under things. Flung to the side without a single care until Rose Tyler stood naked and shivering in the tiny space separating her living room from her kitchen. A headache pursued her mind and nausea haunted her stomach, like her insides were twisting in rebellion against the unfairness of it all.

She cried.

 **oooOOOooo**

The Moment stood on the edge of a decision. It would have been wiser to not look at Rose Tyler's crying, shaking form as she did so, but she couldn't help it. She didn't care if it affected her judgment. She _wanted_ it to affect her judgment, actually. She wanted the cries of Rose Tyler to push her forward like a call to arms. Not that it would really make a difference, if she was honest with herself. She had already made her choice. She was simply hesitating to take action in the face of uncertain consequences.

Time had ended well, but it did not end as it should have. The _Doctor_ did not end as he should have. The Moment had watched it all, beginning to end, and realized why she had been made a sentinel of the universe. She was meant to watch it, so that she could change it. She knew what parts of Time would have to shift to make way for something better, to defy chaos and make good.

 _I watched Time freeze and burn so that I could undo it._

She extricated herself from her current form and tossed herself backwards through space and time to the last days of Rose Tyler.

She was going to do it again.

She wouldn't use Rose Tyler's face and form this time. She would use Rose Tyler in her fullness. The Bad Wolf would take point on this second go, complete the mission, and all the time in universe would change.

John Tyler died a beautiful death of stars and comfort in his home with the love of his life. That was not to be undone. But, this time, Rose Tyler would live, and so would the Doctor.

 **oooOOOooo**

Her ninety-seventh birthday came and went, followed by her anniversary. Not her wedding anniversary, no. The anniversary of the day she was first been trapped in Pete's World.

It had been seventy-four years.

She was an old woman. John got old and so did she. Her hair was white. Her face was wrinkled and her skin was spotted and she had very aged well, managing to successfully avoid both her mother's paunch and her father's hair-loss, but she wondered if the characters of her childhood would recognize her if they saw her. The Doctor probably wouldn't, she imagined. He'd walk right past her. Mickey might recognize her if he looked twice (he would, he would, she knew he would). Shareen? Nah. Shareen barely remembered her own ex-boyfriends, forget a friend who ran off and never came back. Jimmy Stone… well, hopefully not.

People always thought it was so impressive to be nearly a hundred years old, but the truth was that getting so old hadn't been much except for an annoying impediment on her running abilities, in Rose's case. She had reached the highly overrated age of ninety-seven, somehow, when she wasn't looking. Getting old had happened and John had died and Rose still wasn't sure _how_. How? When had that happened? Where had all the time gone?

 _John took it with him._

There was nothing to soothe the hurt. At least, not yet. She was hurting, heart and soul, and the wounds festered. She needed to bleed, to clean away the pain and let it flow from her, but she couldn't. She didn't know how. Not without John. She hadn't realized how emotionally dependent on him she was until now. It was ironic, really, considering how obviously dependent on _her_ John had always been. Had this happened when she was younger… maybe that would have been different. Maybe she would have been fresh enough, firm enough, to let the pain bleed out. Or, on the other hand, maybe it would have done her in. Maybe after being abandoned by the Doctor and then left behind again by John, she would have said, _no more_ , and her fragile, broken heart would have given out.

"Don't matter," she told herself. The could-have-beens were the worst part of everything. Rose had learned her lesson about entertaining what-ifs. They hurt too much to dwell on. It was better to stay in the here and now.

So. She survived one year and two months without John. _Impressive._

It wasn't as miserable as she expected it to be. The grief was painful yes, so painful, but the passing time was just… bittersweet. Every day felt like a goodbye. She was surprised that she had lasted six months, really. She and John had become so dependent on each other throughout their marriage that the idea that she had managed to not _let go_ after six months alone was astounding. A borderline miracle, really, hitched on the fact that she was _driven_ to live. _("You don't just_ _ **give up**_ _!")_

But, oddly enough, she was glad. It had been hard and it had hurt, but lasting this long meant that she got to say a _proper_ goodbye. As proper of one as she could give, to the people who mattered.

Over the years, Rose and John had trained seven hundred and fifty-three recruits for Torchwood. Each and every one of them turned out to be spectacular, and even as Rose and John aged, the training didn't stop. Oh, no. Not even when John knew he was dying did it stop. He loved them too much.

After the funeral, Rose made it clear to Torchwood that she would finish training her last batch of recruits and then wash her hands of the whole thing. They deserved it, after all. They had stood with her through John's death, had grieved with her. So, she kept her promise. She pushed those recruits harder than she had ever pushed, determined to make them the best there were.

She gave them a royal send-off when training was over and done. It was her first time doing so without John. She gave them a rather good speech, full of spunky Doctor-sayings and John-wisdom and a dash of the things she had learned and said when she was still young and had realized that the world was crashing in around her head and there was no stopping it.

 _"_ _It's not about the aliens or the adventurin'. That's not what's important. It's about a better way of livin' your life."_

She had said it to other recruits, but those last fifteen had never heard those words before. They latched on, staring at her with wide eyes. They were wonderfully new and naïve, even more so than she had been when she discovered those scraps of wisdom.

 _"_ _You don't just give up. You make a stand. You say no. Even when other people run away."_

They left her with hugs and smiles and kisses on her cheek. Her last recruits – they were still stinging from John's death as well. They had been John's as much as they were hers. She was Mama Wolf and he was Papa Wolf and they were the Cubs. That made them all the more important.

 _"_ _You're my last. You're_ _ **John's**_ _last. That means that you will be legends for the rest of your lives."_

 _(Consider this my last goodbye.)_

 **oooOOOooo**

The Moment took a human form, one she thought that Rose would respond well to, if it became necessary for them to meet face-to-face. She watched Rose from a distance, waiting for the right opportunity, getting used to walking on two legs.

Death would probably be the best way to remove Rose Tyler from this world. It would be the easiest, anyway, with the soul naturally detaching from the body instead of the Moment having to pull Rose free by her own power (with the exception of death, souls could not be removed from their vessels without consent, but even with consent, it was not easy, not with the way souls were so tightly woven into their physical vessels). But if Rose got too close to death, she might accept it and let the Moment's offer pass, and there would be nothing the Moment could do about it then. Death wasn't something to be cheated, not that way. If Rose died, her soul would leave and be beyond the Moment's reach. End of story, again.

Invading a time that was not open to her presence had not been without its consequences. A paradox was already beginning to form, and unless she fixed it, it could corrupt all of Pete's World. The Reapers, those nasty vultures, would make a merry party of it. The Moment had to get this right and tidy, and she only had one chance to do it. She would not be able to go back and try again. If she did try, the immediate paradox that would be created from that would be… oh, shattering. So the Moment had to time it perfectly. She could make the offer once, and that was all. She had one chance.

 _Rose Tyler, do you love the Doctor?_

 **oooOOOooo**

People came to see her. She wouldn't open the door for them. She told them to go away, but that was only so that they would know she was alive and not worth breaking the door down. She had groceries sent for. She got mail through the slot, most of it not worth her time, but there were a few letters she replied to (including an apology from Yang Lei that seemed sincere, if not a bit formal). Mostly, she just stayed in her flat, where she was comfortable. If Torchwood hadn't figured it out yet, she was _retired_. And she probably didn't have long to live, either, so… well, that was that. She spent her days in comfort, surrounded by memories of John.

Rose knew that John Noble hadn't been the Doctor. He may have held the Doctor's memories, but he had very much been his own person (a person who Rose loved, not _because_ of his similarities to the Doctor as much as _despite_ them). The Doctor was out there in a parallel universe, saving the world with new companions and new enemies. Maybe he was missing her. A selfish part of her hoped that he _did_ miss her, but the kinder part prayed that he had shed whatever pain he felt and found happiness. Even... maybe even in someone else's arms. It was hard to imagine that, painful, even, but not something she wanted to withhold from him. No matter what, she wanted him to be happy. After all, if she got to have John, it was hardly fair for the Doctor not to have someone to care for him. He needed it more than she did.

(Maybe he had even lived so long as to have forgotten her.)

And then there was some part of her that was too angry at him to want either. They had a chance to be together and _he sent her away_ like he _didn't need her_ and that hurt like burning from the inside out (she would know, she had done it before). John, though, _John_ had burned and cried with her, until he reached the physical age of over a hundred years old and he could burn and cry no more. And somewhere in the middle, he had married her, and they had been happy.

After the Doctor left them on Bad Wolf Bay, it had taken a month for them to realize what had happened. That John was not the Doctor and that they had been abandoned with no way out and no way to call the Doctor. With their situations reversed (John as the lost, unknowing creature, and Rose as the fantastic guide to the new world he was faced with), it was made more and more obvious until John blurt it right out– he was his own man, and not the Doctor at all. John considered the Doctor his twin brother, saying that it was an accurate way to explain it. Same face, similar temperament, but you would never say they were the same person. When that realization was truly and unequivocally made, the backlash was terrible to behold, even from the outside looking in, and Rose had a front-row seat to it all. John retreated into his own fear, horrified by his own foreign body and uncomfortable in his own thoughts. He almost ruined himself. The parallel universe had been a struggle, as was humanity. But Rose pulled him back to life. He adjusted and faced the fear, and it was a magical change. He was wonderful, John-not-the-Doctor, and then he was her husband.

And it was such a fantastic life they lived.

 **oooOOOooo**

Sometimes, she woke up already crying. She would realize the situation that was reality, and then cry herself back to sleep.

Other times she would reach out across the sheets for John only for her brain to catch up to her body and remind her that John was no more. That was the worst thing. Rose hadn't slept alone in so long that she had forgotten what it felt like. Had the nights of her youth felt so cold and lonely? How had she ever slept peacefully before there was John at her side? How had she fallen asleep without the sound of someone else breathing? Had she really ever gotten a full eight hours of rest without her legs tangled up with someone else's?

John's absence was a jolt to her being worthy of a bucket of ice water, and it drove her to doing the things she said she would never do. She fantasized, sitting all day and reliving the memories in her mind without bothering to get out of bed or even feed herself. She would talk to him, too, asking what he felt about this or that or pointing out something in the newspaper that she thought he might find worth his interest.

"I've finally gone barmy, John," she would say to the empty air of an empty house. "But I _am_ alright, you know. Alright enough to function, I s'pose. Tha's the sad bit though, innit? I can live without you, but I can't do much else, can I? Won't have to, fortunately. I'm ninety-seven now. An' I'm tired. Can't be too long now."

She had aged well, but her youth had not been gently lived. Surely, it had taken some toll on her heart that she couldn't quite heal. Surely, something inside her would strain and fail soon, finally giving in after the abuse her body had taken in her younger years caught up with her in her old age.

When she was kept up at night by her overactive mind, she would stare at the glowing constellations painted on the ceiling of her bedroom and talk to John. Or, when her head was too jumbled for the complexities of a fully one-sided conversation, she would wish. She wished, although she knew the despair of wishing, that things could be the way they had been. She wanted to be sixty-some years younger and newlywed with John. She wished to have him back. She wished that he could have lasted just a little while longer with her, that he could have had more time (and that thought, that thought for time, it made her sick like nothing else did, because _Time_ ).

Or, further than that? Even as sleep crept up on her, her heart clenched as she wished…

The Doctor. She wished for the Doctor. She had loved him too (first), and differently than she had loved John (for you can have romantic loves, plural and sincere, but no two loves are the same even when felt by the same person twice), but she had loved him just as much. Not in the same way, but equally. It had been so long, and she had comforted herself with the idea that the Doctor would move on and forward, as was his nature, and that he would live so long that he would forget her and miss her no more ( _no more_ ).

Yes, she wished for the Doctor. To be with him. To be back, to undo the Battle of Canary Wharf, to live as she had for three years in brilliant, near-death-experiences, seeing-things-no-human-ever-has rushes of happiness and love and _him_. Oddly enough, that was probably a more realistic request than bringing John back. John was dead. The Doctor was still alive in the Prime Universe, somewhere. Probably hundreds or even thousands of years older, probably with a different face, probably in love half a dozen times since her, but alive. Somewhere, somewhen. Technically possible to reach but improbable in a way she couldn't calculate but she very much imagined that she would win the lottery five times in a row before reaching the Doctor again. And what she _wouldn't give_ to be with him, what she _wouldn't sacrifice_ –

What hadn't she sacrificed, for that matter? What hadn't been taken from her? The Ponds were gone. Jack and Melody were gone. Her parents, her brother. Her _husband_.

 _Is there anything left?_

Rose's eyes snapped open. That was _not_ her usual inner voice.

 _Rose Tyler. What wouldn't you sacrifice?_

Gingerly, so as not to further distress the ache in her bones, Rose sat up. The mild glow of painted stars on her ceiling was the only light in the room, and it wasn't much. Rose's eyes, as old as they were, could see the faint outlines of furniture around the room, but nothing else. She heard not breathing or movement other than her own. But there was a hint of presence in the room, a _something_ , and it made a barely-there shock of fear wriggle through Rose's gut.

 _There's not much to be afraid of, as old as you are,_ the presence said, sounding very feminine in Rose's head. _And you've seen so much. I'm nothing compared to the monsters you've faced._

"Are you a monster?" Rose asked. Might as well know what she was dealing with, even if was about to kill her.

 _Kill you?_ A chuckle echoed through Rose's mind, but it wasn't the low, menacing sound that Rose had come to recognize as the laughter of a murderous villain. In fact, it almost sounded genuinely friendly. _No, I'm not going to kill you. Quite the opposite, actually. You're already dying, Rose Tyler. I can see it. Your soul is letting go of your body._

"That's no news to me," Rose said to the dark.

 _Would you sacrifice that? Your death?_

"What?"

 _I know you would_ _ **die**_ _for the Doctor, but are you willing to live for him? For a future together?_

"I don't have a future," Rose muttered.

 _I know someone else who said the exact same thing to me! He was the Doctor. His future turned out to be you. Good thing I convinced him, isn't it?_

Breath caught in Rose's throat. She clenched the sheets. "You know the Doctor…?"

 _Yes, yes, that's what this is about. I'm asking you, Rose, what wouldn't you sacrifice for him? What are your limits? I must know. Your past? Would you give that up?_

Rose frowned. "Not worth it."

 _The future is not worth keeping on, but the_ _ **past**_ _is worth sacrifice?_

Rose scoffed angrily at her mental opponent. There were embers aching in her bones, cotton in her mouth, heavy lead in her mind, but she was a wolf poised to strike the challenger. She didn't particularly appreciate being argued with in her own head.

"Y'see," Rose thought, "it ain't so simple as that. The past makes the future. If you sacrifice the future for the past's sake, ya get a new future. A better one, if you did right by the past." Oh, dear. That had made more sense in her head.

 _You believe that._

"Yes." The Doctor had taught her that. Even if it made slightly more sense when he said it.

 _You would go back?_

"Of _course_ I would."

 _You're willing to sacrifice the future for a new one. A new future means losing things. Not just bad things. What about John?_

A grief-ridden wound on her heart flared hotly at the reminder. "John is dead. He's my past, now."

 _You would curse him to non-existence?_

"He did exist. Has existed. You can't destroy existence." Rose took a trembling breath. "I found that out the hard way. You can kill and smash and grind a thing down to atoms, but you can't destroy a soul. No matter what you do to the timelines, a soul that ever existed in any way will always exist."

 _You believe in souls?_

"I didn't before. I do now. John and I… had some experiences."

 _I'm sure._

"You are?"

 _I would know about souls, trust me. I am one, in a barest form. It's actually very pleasant, to not be physically constrained._

"What are you?"

 _I am… the Moment. That's what the Time Lords called me, anyway. It's a fitting enough name. I choose the moment in which everything changes, or does not. Which is why I'm asking you Rose Tyler. Do you really want to go back?_

"I'm old," Rose said, because that was reason enough to say no, but it seemed that the Moment was well aware of her state of health. "Are you saying you can do that, whoever you are? Take me back?"

 _And if I am? Are you willing to be Bad Wolf again?_

Now, _that_ was enough to make Rose bare her teeth (proudly, at her old age, her teeth had stayed firmly and healthily in place and she was free of dentures, thanks to the advanced medical care of Pete's World). She couldn't snarl at nothing, of course, but her mind made it very clear that she was not to be mistaken in her next statement:

"I never _stopped_ being Bad Wolf. I _am_ Bad Wolf."

 _Good. That settles that. Now, what's the word you're so fond of?_

"Allons-y."

 _Quite right. Allons-y._

 ** _No more._**

 **oooOOOooo**

In the only universe where Time Lords existed, the last Type-40 TARDIS _screamed_.

 **ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo**

 **Thank you for reading. Reviews are appreciated.**


	2. And They Said, No More

**ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo**

 **Chapter Two: And They Said, "No More."**

 **ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo**

 _My dear defender,_

 _I hope the painting known as Gallifrey Falls will serve as proof of my identity and of the legitimacy of these words I write to you now. You will recall that you pledged yourself to the safety of my kingdom. In this capacity, I have appointed you as curator of the Under Gallery, where deadly danger to England is locked away. Should any disturbance occur within its walls, it is my wish that you be summoned. God speed, Doctor._

 _signed,_

 _Elizabeth I_

Paper yellow with age crinkled between the Eleventh Doctor's fingers as he read over the faded ink for the fifth time in five minutes. It wasn't right. It wasn't right at all. Elizabeth would have written such a letter, yes, but something about it was wrong. The tone of it, her way of addressing him, all sounded terribly off even though he couldn't quite remember the right way of it.

He looked at Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, then up at the oil painting of Queen Elizabeth. There was something missing from that, too, because he remembered when that painting had been requisitioned and he had been present. He had been in that painting, or a past him had been. But there was no version of the Doctor on that canvas. Only Queen Elizabeth the First and an empty space next to her. A space where his tenth body should have been. And he couldn't even remember _why_.

Something had changed his timeline. And, really, the most likely culprit was, well… _himself_.

"Kate, what in the _world_ did I do?"

 **oooOOOooo**

 _No more._

Time bent, a flexible line that looped and tangled in on itself (and was therefore not technically a line, but that was all wibbly-wobbly anyways). _No more._ Space crumpled away for her, allowing passage, and the fabric of the universe shrieked in victory, because this was _right_. _No more._ This was all as it should be. _No more._ There was such thing as meant-to-be, as right and wrong and good and evil, and in that moment, Rose Tyler was everything she was meant to be, raging through the stars, _because the Doctor needed her_. _No more._

 _"_ _I've got_ _no_ _A-Levels,_ _no_ _job,_ _no_ _future... but I tell ya what I have got..."_

 _"_ _Time Lords of Gallifrey, Daleks of Skaro, I serve notice upon you all…"_

 _"_ _If I believe in one thing, just_ _ **one thing**_ _, I believe in **her**!"_

 _"_ _That's who I am."_

 _"_ _I did it!"_

 _"_ _Rose! I can dance!"_

 _"It was a better life."_

 _"I'm old."_

 _"_ _Stuck with you, that's not so bad…"_

 _"_ _Rose, you've got to let go!"_

 _"_ _Hold on!"_

 _"_ _I see the_ _ **atoms**_ _of your existence and I_ _ **divide them**_ _."_

 ** _No more._**

For less than a second, Gallifrey went silent at her arrival, a hush that rippled across the whole planet, only to explode once more with a noise. A small, tiny noise. The distant echo of a wolf's howl that made the air tremble. A scuffle of paws, up from the shifting dust and rattling against the wooden boards of an abandoned barn. _No more._

"Hello?"

Well, _mostly_ abandoned.

"Is anyone there?"

"It's nothing." _Ooh_. That was interesting. Her accent was different. She sounded like the… the… the voice, the other voice; the one that had been in her head. Was this what the Doctor felt like when he regenerated? A different voice and a jumbled head, still insisting that she was the same old Rose Tyler, despite the differences. Hm. And what in the world was she _wearing_? It wasn't anything like what she would wear… she liked it. Or, she thought she liked it. She wasn't sure. What _did_ she like? _No, go with your instincts_ – she _partially_ liked it. It was missing something. A color. "S'just a wolf."

 _"_ _All pink and yellow."_

The man in front of her was older, grizzled and worn with dark hair turned mostly silver and creases in his skin. He wasn't remarkable in looks, not special at all, but he was so familiar. His clothes were a mismatch outfit; a tattered cravat paired with a leather jacket and boots that buttoned all the way up their sides. Nothing about his appearance was recognizable to her (wait, no, the _jacket_ ), but, somehow… he was exactly what she expected. He was _right_.

He – _she knows him, but she doesn't recognize him, how does that work?_ – spun and lurched towards her in a panic and grabbed her arm. "Don't sit on that!"

Sit? Sit on what? Was she even sitting? Oh, yes, she was. She was sitting on a box… no, _the_ box. It was a very important box. But she wanted to sit on it. It had _invited_ her to sit on it. It was a polite box.

"Why not?" she asked, amus– amused? Was she amused? Yes, she was. Her head was starting to clear up, just a little bit. Lovely, but her voice was still slow and tired. Ooh, but these leggings were comfy. Full of holes, but comfy.

"Because it's not a chair!" he snapped at her. "It's the most dangerous weapon in the universe!"

Her body ached in protest as he pulled her up from her _perfectly comfortable seat thank you_ and practically dragged her across the dusty floor the give her an unceremonious dump out of the rickety shack and into the dirt. Well, wasn't that rude? _Rude and not ginger._

The door clattered shut behind her.

She knelt in hot, rust-tinged sand, staring at an expanse of foreign landscape. Wind whistled across the empty, shallow dunes, barely shifting the dense sand but still ruffling her hair as it passed. Alien landscape. _Alien_. Raxacorico– no, what was that? What? Not that. New New New New– No, not that, either. Clom– _eww_ , no. What, then? Woman Wept. No, no sand there. Galli–

 _"It's gone. It burnt."_

She is Rose Tyler, on the planet Gallifrey, summoned by the Moment to integrate with the interface. Because... because... _no more!_

 _Because he is the Doctor, and you are the Bad Wolf, and this is how it should be._

Her hands flew to her face. Smooth skin. No wrinkles, no scars. Rose twisted her hair between her fingers and found beads and blonde– real blonde, not peroxide-blonde, nor was it the grey-streaked brunette that it had been for most of her life in Pete's World. She giggled breathlessly, marveling at how she could clench her fingers without causing pains in her joints. She dug her fingers into the hot sand, arms trembling as they realized their own strength. Rose pulled her hands free to pat herself down and found a young, well-toned body, in even better shape than she had been in during the peak of her field service in Torchwood. This was a body meant for _running_.

 _"Hello, Rose Tyler!_ _Run for your life!"_

In a flash, she was back to where she started, feeling very pleased with herself as her head began to truly clear.

"Why can't it be both?"

The Doctor – _oh!_ – spun around, wide-eyed and skittish (battle-ready, old soldier, like Nine but a bit off). She couldn't do anything but smile at him (grin, grin like an idiot, wide and so desperately happy), the sudden realization of where she was and who she was with finally dawning on her.

As for the where, she knew she was on Gallifrey, but she also was in what looked like a barn. It was cluttered and abandoned, which seemed like a good idea to her, seeing as a barn is rather useless in the middle of a barren desert. There were abandoned tools and thread-bare canvas bags and even an old tire lying on the sandy floor (Gallifreyans had tires?), but no sign of anything else. Just dust, sand, and more dust turning hot under the pounding attention of the sun. It was a perfectly isolated shelter that gave the illusion of privacy.

 _Well. No better place to destroy the world in_ , Rose supposed.

"Who are you?" the Doctor asked. _He's the Doctor, he's the Doctor, God help her, this man is the Doctor and he hasn't even met her yet._

"Oh, _look_ at you," she cooed, tempted to reach out and brush her palms against his beard. Did any other incarnations of the Doctor have a beard? "Stuck between a girl and a box. Story of your life, eh, Doctor?"

He tilted his head at the all-too-true words coming from someone he saw as a stranger. "You know me?"

How was she supposed to answer that? Honestly, she didn't quite care, seeing as she was becoming a bit preoccupied with the Doctor's tired eyes –but younger, in an older face than she had ever seen– and the giddy-happy-overwhelmed-joyous-crying sensation the was bubbling and bursting just behind her sternum and up in her throat and behind her eyes. Oh, that hurt, in a way, but it felt amazing. Wait, he had asked her a question. _What was it? Oh. Oh, right, well. Had better answer him._

Rose snapped up to her feet, bouncing on her heels just a bit. It was so _nice_ , not being a rickety old woman. And this body, one that had just crashed through the universes, felt so energetic. Bounce. Energy. _Hmm_. Probably the Moment giving her a boost (and wasn't she _amazing_ , the Moment, so familiar even though Rose had never met her?). There was almost too much energy, too much bounce, like a wound-up spring, but Rose reveled in it. It felt like life. She hadn't felt it in a while. Not since John had– _no, no-no-no-no-no, don't pull your grief with you. This is new. Recover, repair, make anew. Always love John, but don't let that life haunt this one._

"I heard you." _No more._ That was _his_ voice she had heard as she flew through existence. _His_ thoughts. Wait, was she a mind-reader? She didn't want to be a mind-reader. That sounded highly invasive, and, also, highly annoying. The last thing she needed was to know what everyone around her was thinking. That would get annoying very quickly.

He frowned. Or, he had already been frowning, so what he did was frown deeper, brows knitting harshly and wrinkles creasing. "You _heard_ me?"

"I _hear_ you." She cocked her head. She could, in fact, hear him in his mind, if she focused. She could hear more than one of him. She could hear her two Doctors more clearly than any of the others, perhaps because she recognized them, but the rest of them were there, too, babbling. Not babbling the way Ten did, although a few of them seemed to have a gob nearly as bad as his, but like the sound of a stream, continuous and bubbling and overlapping each other so that individual sounds could barely be deciphered. So they were all there, and... quite a few of them, too. _Definitely_ more than ten, which meant there were ones that came after him, and that made Rose feel absolutely marvelous. " _All_ of you."

His piercing stare only sharpened, wary and distrustful. And not just wary, but _weary_. Tired of having to be so suspicious of people's motives in war. Rose couldn't say that she blamed him. The Moment, a consciousness linking to her own mind with sparkling spider web threads, was whispering history and knowledge into her mind. She could see him ( _this is the one between Eight and Nine, because he doesn't think he's the Doctor… how odd_ ); see the Time War and all the sacrifices he had made. No, she didn't blame him at all for not trusting her. In fact, she wasn't sure if anything, short of regeneration and then some, would allow him to trust again.

"They must have told you the Moment had a conscience." _She was good enough to choose me to help you, wasn't she?_ Rose couldn't help the silly, giddy, too-wide-but-just-right smile that made its way up her face. The strength of it hurt her cheeks, but she hadn't smiled like this since John was alive, so it wasn't as if she was going to complain. "Hello!"

"A conscience..." He turned a bit so that he was looking at her from an angle, as if trying to catch her in the corner of his eye. His eyebrows drew in and up into a classic expression of baffled realization. " _You're_ the interface?"

"Well, I do my best," she replied with a smirk and a tug at her freshly-blonde hair. "I'm not the interface itself. Just temporarily integrated with it. Very much my own person, just as the Moment is her own self. She's lovely, too, very polite."

"What sort of person?" Translation: _what sort of ruddy alien has been integrated with the interface of the most dangerous weapon in the universe?_ Oh, this one _was_ different, wasn't he? Nine would have just outright said it, and Ten probably would have run his mouth even _more_. And as rudely as possible, that daft Time Lord.

"Was human, when we met. _Will_ meet. Will _met_? Anyways, not human anymore." That silly tongue-in-teeth smile was back again. "Not that I mind. Because _this_ –" She ran her hands down the curves of her figure, and it might just have been her imagination, but it looked like his eyes had traced the paths her hands made. "–is fun. And conveniently young. And fun. Oh, said that, didn't I? Double fun, then."

She sounded like the pinstripes Doctor. Not that she minded _that_ , either, but she probably needed to shut her gob before she said something that caused a paradox. Was this dangerous? Did it matter? Did the Moment have the power to undo a paradox, or to keep them from happening in the first place?

Rose felt out from her mind without even twitching a finger. Invisible tendrils stretched far and fast; these were the gifts that the Moment had given her. Or maybe it was the Bad Wolf, since she reached out and found the TARDIS to be nearly out of range, but one of her many new senses hummed a tune to the TARDIS and the TARDIS eagerly sang back.

 _I missed you too, old girl._

"Why did you park so far away? Didn't you want her to _see_ it?" She nudged the Moment's physical form with her foot for emphasis. The Doctor still didn't _seem_ to understand. Rose knew better.

"Want who to see?" he asked, prompting a vicious, bare-toothed smile from Rose. _Don't play dumb with me, Doctor. I know all your tricks, including a few you haven't even made up yet. I know you._

"The _TARDIS,_ " Rose hissed through her smile. "Don't treat her like she's stupid. She's not. She knew what you were doing. You walked for miles... and miles, and miles, and you really thought that it would make a difference."

His dark eyes narrowed at her. "I was thinking–"

She snapped back into focus, probably too close to the Doctor for his comfort, but it wasn't as if she cared. Or, she _did_ care, but not for if he was uncomfortable. She just cared that she was wonderfully, brilliantly close to him, closer than she had been in what felt like a lifetime. And it had been a lifetime, practically. Seventy-four years was a human lifetime, certainly. And now that she was up close, she thought it a convenient time to notice that he was still very attractive, despite his age. "No _more_."

He leaned back from her intense presence in his personal space. "What?"

"No more. Right?" Rose leaned forward, following him, trying not to smile. "That's what you were thinking _. No more_."

"No more," he echoed.

"No more." Rose could hold in her giggle, but not the little marching dance she jigged in imitation of his gruff manner. Oh, she was giddy. It was like being drunk, but better. Being drunk wasn't actually all that fun, and really not good for you, which was why she hadn't done it since she was a daft drop-out teenager. This was much more fun but, oh, she really did need to stop before she made a complete fool out of herself. "No more!"

"Stop it!" he protested, grabbing at her arm and failing to keep a grip. She slipped away from him, giggling breathlessly as she did. "Stop!"

She spun around to face him and couldn't help but add in one last, "No more."

Rose stuck out a hand for him to shake.

"Rose Tyler. From your past!" Her time sense – ooh, _that_ was new, but she understood it, sort of, not really – practically wriggled across her skin in protest. Well, the word _past_ was obviously too linear. Or was it? It was the past to her, not him. Or– mm, she had to keep talking; he was looking at her– "Your past or your future. I'm always getting those mixed up."

"I don't have a future," he groused sternly, ignoring the offered handshake.

 _Sounds familiar._

Rose scoffed lightly, retracting her hand with a shake of her head. "That's impossible. I've seen it. I'm _in_ it. I came from it, so if it wasn't so, I couldn't possibly be here, could I?"

The Doctor stared at her before grumbling, "I suppose not," in a tone that suggested that he might be feigning agreement for the sake of avoiding an argument. _Smart man. You may survive yet._

"Uh-huh." She made languid paces around him, drinking in the sensation of stretching her legs as well as the look of _him_. Her joints popped, in the pleasant way that felt like scratching an itch instead of the way that sounded like cracking bone made her worry that she needed a new kneecap. Being young was absolute _bliss_.

Her blatant staring had obviously made him feel self-conscious, because he suddenly cleared his throat to focus her attention to something he was more comfortable with (as in, anything but himself). "Rose... what was it? Tiller?"

"No." _Tyler._ "Yes." _You_ _said my name! Rose. But, no, there's something different here._ "No, sorry, no, in _this_ form... I'm called..." Rose trailed off and stared at the dust. She felt his eyes on her and trembled.

This was _past_ him. The him that hadn't met her yet. She wasn't sure how this was going to work out, but she wasn't Rose Tyler to him yet. For now, she would have to be… well, something, she wasn't sure, but… in the dust was a footprint, trampled over and smudged by her earlier _no more_ dance. It looked like a paw print.

 _You know what you are, Rose Tyler. What you have always been and always will be, as you made yourself._

"Bad Wolf..." Rose barely resisted the urge to smile as she turned her gaze back to the Doctor. "Are you afraid of the Big Bad Wolf, Doctor?"

His eyes widened, and she wondered what he had seen to prompt such a reaction.

The Doctor pursed his lips into a very thin line, and Rose shouldn't have found that adorable, but there was no such luck when it came to her resisting the Doctor in _any_ of his forms.

"Stop calling me Doctor," he said. It sounded like he had repeated those words too many times.

"I've always called you Doctor," Rose said back, although she was tempted to call him a Gloomy Gus instead, just for his reaction. "Or I always will. Blimey, meeting people out of order is a bit of a muck-up, isn't it?"

"You could have called my past self 'Doctor,' but you can't now or ever after. I've been fighting this war for a long time. I've lost the right to be the Doctor."

"Oh, quit being so melodramatic." Rose _hmph_ ed and crossed her arms. A hot desert breeze filtered through the wooden slats of the barn and her too-good-to-be-true blonde hair swept across her face. She hoped that it looked cool instead of daft, like most people looked when their hair blew in their faces. "You plan on destroying Gallifrey, yes?"

He grimaced, but didn't hesitate to answer, "Yes."

"Well, _tough_! Not happenin'!" Rose snapped, accent suddenly sounding very _Powell Estates_ again (was that her regular accent coming back?). "I've seen the aftermath. The _regret_. I ain't watchin' ya break yourself again."

The not-Doctor – _Warrior_ , that's what he was, the Warrior– looked at her out of the corner of his eye again. What was he trying to see? "You could rewrite your own history that way. We may never meet, if you change this. The only evidence that you ever existed will be in my memory, and maybe not even that. If it causes a paradox to remember a person who never was in the first place, I'll have to forget you."

"Anythin' for you." Rose punctuated that statement with a firm nod. "Now. The Moment and I are going to teach you some jiggery-pokery, 'cause I don't think we can do this alone."

"Jiggery-pokery?" A slip of a smile teased the left corner of the Warrior's lips even though he was obviously trying to resist it. "Is that a technical term?"

Rose, having no such qualms as he did, let her smile nearly break her face, because _oh that was him that was the Doctor hello my precious, daft alien man._ "Depends on what grade you got in hullabaloo. I did rather well in that subject."

" _Ah_ ," agreed the Warrior with a _very_ serious nod, "I see."

Oh, she liked this him. He was right (not in that he was correct, but that there was a rightness to him). Very much the Doctor, despite being the Warrior. A distrustful, war-torn Doctor, but still– er, and wearing Nine's jacket. That _was_ Nine's jacket, wasn't it? Or was that just wishful thinking on Rose's part?

 _Time to find out?_

Rose spread her arms and stretched her fingers, feeling the crackling rush of power race across her skin as her body remembered how it felt to be able to stretch without aching. Lighting sizzled through her bones, hot and buzzing, making her shudder. This was the Bad Wolf and the Moment in concert, combining their abilities in a way that made Rose's whole being _sing_. She felt the TARDIS at the edge of it all, singing along, rejoicing in the sudden joining of past and future. It was paradoxical, it was brilliant, and it was _hers_.

Golden light erupted and spun wildly over their heads, playing at the tips of Rose's fingers, tossing up her hair, greeting her like an old friend. And it _was_ an old friend. She looked up, smiling wildly as her eyes glowed gold and bright. It sang a song that she recognized from long, long ago, wild and powerful and as familiar as the TARDIS. This was the Time Vortex, or part of it, and it recognized her. She hadn't realized….

"We're opening a window into your future!" Rose called out to the Warrior, who had dropped to his knees and was leaning back in the upset dirt, awe-struck as sand and wind whirled violently around them. She probably wouldn't get to see that expression on the Doctor very often– she made sure she wouldn't forget it. "If you're going to save us all, you're going to need a little help!"

The Vortex hissed and burst and rang out with one finally victory note before sputtering into nothing. Something dropped to the dirt with a soft _pfht_.

… Was that a hat?

"Huh." Rose sucked on the inside of her cheek, almost embarrassed by the anti-climactic show of power but too surprised to be bothered by it. "Um, alright, I wasn't expecting that."

The Warrior, who seemed a bit out of breath, eyed the red hat-thing as if he thought it might bite him. Rose couldn't blame him– it _had_ just dropped out of a swirling vortex of time and power. Potentially dangerous, that. "What is _that_?"

"I think it's a…" Oh, she remembered what those things were called! "It's a fez."

The Warrior raised a brow at Rose, skepticism plain in his expression. "My future is a _fez_?"

Rose smirked. "Your turn, Doctor. We're going for a ride."

 **oooOOOooo**

 _We're going for a ride, she said. Brace yourself, she said. This woman is mad._

 _And maybe a little bit brilliant, but mad._

The Bad Wolf girl had re-started the time-vortex-fissure-whatever and practically _tossed_ him through it, and he had fallen through for a less-than-stellar landing to find her standing on the other side, looking as pleased as punch with herself.

"I _could_ have dropped us right on top of them," she said, with a smile that was far too wide (but it was gorgeous, that smile), "but I thought you _might_ wanna walk that fall off. Nothin' I could do about the rough landing. Sorry. And there was the possibility that you could land on someone, and that would be bad. But, welcome to England! 1562! Queen Elizabeth the First is on the throne, planning wars, beheading people…"

So now the Warrior trudged along through the forest of what would one day be London, cradling a fez in one hand as he snuck glances out of the corner of his eye at the Bad Wolf girl. She had quite a bit of spring in her step, as well as a glint in her whiskey-brown eyes that reminded him of himself. Well, his younger self. The one that was still curious and lively and hadn't been a soldier. Not that the Bad Wolf seemed naïve in any way. Something about her was old, or experienced, but renewed. Sort of like… like Time Lord, fresh from regeneration, taking delight is rediscovering the dexterity of a younger, stronger body after abandoning an old form.

… And she was very _pretty_ , wasn't she?

He knew that he had never seen her in his lives, but she was still inexplicably familiar to him. Something about her begged to be remembered and recognized. He felt the fleeting impulse to run to her, to gather her up in his arms and tell her that he had missed her, but he immediately shrugged the urge away. He didn't know her. And she didn't really know him, either. He wasn't quite sure about that, but if she was from his future, it was most likely the future of a different face. If he had to guess, he would say she was a future companion, and if there was one thing he had learned about his companions, it was that they did not appreciate his multiple incarnations. They kept to the familiar. Even if he gave in to that ridiculous need to greet her like a long-lost lo– _friend_ , which he _wouldn't_ , she would doubtlessly push him away for it. All companions did, somehow or another (even Sarah Jane, who had stuck with him so loyally through a regeneration, and a few others whose names and faces were just beginning to slip into the murkier territories of his memory). He had learned that the hard way. Maybe she was a bit more open than the rest of them, more advanced, since she was doing _this_ , but a human could only be pushed so far.

If he had kept Sarah Jane with him, she would have left him too. That was part of the reason he never gave her the chance to do so. Precious Sarah Jane, that clever old girl, could _not_ be one of the companions to break his hearts. So he broke hers instead, because he was selfish and sick of getting hurt.

 _Forget the Time War. I hurt Sarah Jane. I ought to pay just for that._

The Warrior shook his head and forced himself back to the present, although he wasn't sure _exactly_ when the present was. At least, from his point of view, the present was interesting. It felt like an adventure. He had done nothing but fight since he had regenerated into this body. This would be his first adventure. Also his last, most likely, but that just made it all the more important. And it was wonderful, because not only was he on an adventure of sorts, but he had a companion. Or, this companion had him. The Bad Wolf was leading the way, spirit-guide-style in her mysterious knowledge and abilities. Not that he minded (she was far more helpful and hands-on than any spirit guide the Warrior had ever heard of). No, he didn't mind at all. It was rather nice.

"Hey-hey-hey, whoa, stop," Bad Wolf suddenly said, grabbing his arm and forcing them to a halt, effectively jarring the Warrior out of his reverie.

"What?" he whispered, sensing that there was something not quite right. Her eyes were flaring gold and flickering about, like she expected something to come swooping down on them. "What is it?"

"Shh… y'hear that?" She tilted her head, and he tried to listen and not to be distracted by the way her honey-blonde waves of hair fell away from her shoulders. He succeeded, but only because his attention was drawn by the smile that spread across her face. Such a smile. Her eyes lit up (only figuratively, this time), and she squeezed his arm in excitement. "It's you!"

"Me?" What in the multiverse did _that_ mean?

"Yeah, _you_ ," she giggled, tongue peeking out from between her teeth. "Don't you hear them?"

The Warrior's ears had been good this time around, but he was wearing thin and some of his senses were dulled out. Even Gallifreyans lost some of their sharpness over time, he supposed, although he would remind anyone who doubted him that his mind was still as sharp as a tack, never mind what went wrong with his senses. All that aside, he _did_ manage to hear the echo of voices in the distance. Was that...?

Bad Wolf gripped his hand in hers and gave him a gentle tug.

" _Run_ ," she hissed, mischief in her eyes.

Well, his body might have been a little worse for wear, but it would be a dark day indeed when the _Doctor_ couldn't _run_.

 _What happened to not being the Doctor anymore?_

 _Shut up. I do what I want._

Excitement rushed in his veins as he ran beside her, not relinquishing his hold on her hand. Oh, it had been far too long since he had done this; running for the sake of _running_ , for the _fun_ of it, for _adventure_. The wind was loud against his ears, but he could hear her laughing breathlessly. She was like him, then, wasn't she? There was joy in her– yes, that was it. That was what made her seem so giddy. She _radiated_ joy. She was overflowing with it. The Warrior could hear her single heart thumping wildly in the thrill of it all. He didn't know what was so wonderful, especially with the Time War threatening the fate of the universe and himself on the edge of destroying Gallifrey, but she was practically _flying_ with elation for– for _something_. Something absolutely marvelous, and the Warrior may not have known what it was, but if it made her so indescribably happy, he wanted a piece of it. And, for some reason, that didn't feel like a selfish thought at all.

The forest was streaking past them in a blur as they gained speed and she made a sound, a not-human sound, like the howl of a wolf, and it was glorious.

They skid to a stop when they reached the top of a hill, scattering leaves and twigs and moss across the grass, and she pulled him down to the ground to lie on his stomach. He sunk into the leaves and dirt that had been upturned by their crashing halt, only barely out of breath, and Bad Wolf was right next to him, trying to stifle her own giggling.

"Brilliant, that was," she said, eyes glowing (and he still wasn't used to _that_ , whatever it was). "Yeah?"

"It rather was," he agreed, letting his respiratory bypass system kick in so that he wouldn't sound like he wasn't winded by the run (he had to be impressive, after all; this lovely creature would be his companion at some point), "but, if may I ask, _why_ are we on the ground?"

"Look," she said between grit teeth, once again trying to stop an onslaught of laughter. Cheeky thing. She tossed her head and his eyes followed the gesture down the hill to find two men at the bottom. They were both very young and very tall and he wasn't going to mention their hair, and judging by their state of dress, they definitely _weren't_ from the countryside of Elizabethan England.

"What was _that_?" said the taller one, who was wearing an ill-fitted, pinstriped suit. "It sounded close."

"Just a wolf," said the other, sounding completely unconcerned.

"Are they future companions?" the Warrior asked. "Do you know them?"

"No and yes, sort of." The Bad Wolf took a deep breath, finally calming herself so that she could talk without interrupting herself with giggles. "They're _you_. They're the Doctor."

The conversation below continued on: "Wolves, out here? In broad daylight? Is that normal?"

"Dunno. This isn't exactly my favorite time period, so I don't know much about the behavioral patterns of the local wildlife, although _you_ seem to be having fun–"

" _Nothing_ fun about it. I'm just trying to find the Zygon."

"Right, 'cause kissing is totally a requirement to find which one is–"

Ugh. Zygons. _Kissing_ Zygons. The Warrior made a face.

" _Those two_ are me?" He assumed she would know, as she seemed to know everything else, and he was hoping that she would say it wasn't true or that she was messing with him for a laugh. But that was doubtful. " _Both_ of them?"

"Yeah."

His hopes were dashed. He was really going to become these two pretty ponces, at some future point. And, apparently, kiss a Zygon. Ugh.

"How did they even get here? I don't see any portal."

"I shut it off," Bad Wolf said with a shrug. "They're both here. We don't need a vortex swirling about midair for no reason, do we? Rather defeats the novelty of it."

"Right." He examined the future hims and could not find that he was pleased. They were both too pretty, too young, and that wouldn't bother him so much (young was fine, young meant running was easier and he was remembering how much he _loved_ running), except that they were bickering like the children they appeared to be and were obviously devoid of any sense. "Am I having a midlife crisis?"

"Might do," the Bad Wolf conceded. "I remember it being more of a crushing guilt complex, but, y'know, it might have been both. And I dunno how old they are, really. I think you lied about your age. But I know _that_ one's the tenth," she pointed at sticky-uppy-hair, "and the Moment says that _other_ one's Eleven." She cocked her head at him. "So, you gonna go down there or what?"

"Or what," the Warrior grumbled, but clambered to his feet, brushed the dried leaf crumbs off his front, and started to tromp down the hill. Oh, the things he did for the fate of the universe, and when was the last time he got a thank-you? _Hmph._

"Don't let them bully you!" she called after him.

 _I'm not a child in the playground. I will not be_ _ **bullied**_ _by my older selves, especially ones as silly as_ _ **these**_ _._

The Warrior found slick ground and, precariously fighting for the balance to keeping himself standing upright and therefore preserve his dignity (as well as not dropping the fez), _slid_ the rest of the way down the hill on his heels, leaving trails in the mud behind him.

"Good afternoon!" he called out as he reached level ground, Bad Wolf's laughter echoing in his ears. "Anyone lose a fez?"

Both future hims jerked around to face him, looking a bit like gasping fishes. The first one to regain his voice was sticky-uppy– er, Ten.

"What– you– _you_!" Ten leaned back, obviously less than elated at the appearance of his past self. "What are you doing here? And _how_?"

"Yes, me," the Warrior grunted, tapping the fez with his fingers. He was tempted to _tap-tap-tap-tap_ out the Master's beat, just to spook them, but now didn't strike him as the best time for a practical joke. "Hello. Oh– I assume this is yours."

He tossed the red fez to Eleven, who caught it and blinked those big green eyes that made him look like a sad puppy. For Gallifrey's sake, was _this_ what he was going to be? A sad, floppy-haired, green-eyed puppy and a sneering, ill-tempered, matchstick of a man in a suit that didn't fit? The Warrior rolled his eyes. The future he had despaired for wasn't looking all that _worth_ despairing for, anymore.

"You know who we are," puppy-Eleven said. Ten was still too concerned with looking sour to say anything.

"Yes." Oh, dear. How was he going to explain that? They couldn't see or hear Bad Wolf, he had already realized that, and he hardly wanted them thinking that he was mad, talking to thin air. But shouldn't they remember this, or be remembering it, if he suppressed the memories? Shouldn't they, in some way, remember her? No matter what he had to do to prevent a paradox, he certainly wouldn't be _completely_ erasing Bad Wolf from his memory. Suppressing, yes, erasing, no. She already felt dear to him. No, forgetting her wasn't an option, so what would happen with these two morons?

Bad Wolf materialized at his shoulder, her arms folded and her mouth fixed in a smug smirk.

"Oh, you sneaky Time Lord, you," she cooed, apparently impressed with his act of being all-knowing and unaffected. He resisted the urge to preen, knowing that the only reason he was managing to pass himself off as knowing anything was because of the knowledge _she_ had provided him with. But, still, it was nice to be… _impressive_ , again, as he had once been. It was an old concern, one more of the Doctor's and less of the Warrior's, but he was starting to believe what the Bad Wolf had said– maybe he _was_ still the Doctor. But only maybe! It was a _slight_ possibility and nothing more!

Eleven suddenly looked a bit startled. "Wait a second. How did you know that the fez was mine? It could have been his."

 _Well, the Bad Wolf didn't know any incarnation of me that wore a fez, but she recognized Tight-Suit, so it must be yours._ Right. _That_ would go over well. The Warrior pointed at Ten. "He doesn't look like the sort to put a hat over that hair."

"Ey!" Ten exclaimed, running a hand through his hair to make it stick up even more. "I can wear a hat if I want!"

The Bad Wolf laughed.

Eleven's eyes narrowed. " _What_ did you do?"

" _Me_?" The Warrior tried to focus on what was being said to him, he honestly did, but his eyes were following Bad Wolf, who was circling Ten with a distant, wistful expression on her face. Ten was probably the incarnation she had traveled with. Poor dear, to be stuck with the ill-tempered one. If only he could keep her around. But, if she was from his future, that would only make a paradoxical mess. Shame. "Whatever do you mean?"

"This is different." Eleven's hands swung back and forth (something he seemed to do a lot), indicating the present space. "I remember this, but it's different and my memories of the events are starting to go blank, which means that you're changing your own timeline, so _what_ did you do?"

"Sorry, that's on me," Bad Wolf admitted, giving the Warrior an apologetic look. "Things weren't going to happen this way. The Moment decided to give it a do-over."

"A do-over?" the Warrior echoed.

Eleven balked. "A what, now? Do-over? What are you talking about?"

"Would be nice to know," Ten agreed.

"It's not me, I swear." Truth. Now, if he had said, _I have no idea what you're talking about_ , that would have been a lie, but the Warrior could have the satisfaction of knowing that he wasn't the one directly changing anything. It was all on Bad Wolf. He just had to trust that she and the Moment together could prevent any substantial damage from being done to existence.

"You sure?"

"Of course, I'm sure. I'm from the past, or _your_ past. Only someone from the future could change the timeline." Also true. _Let them interpret that how they will. If they can't see that I've been touched by a time-sentient being that isn't a Time Lord, then both of them are time-blind. Serves them right._

"He's right," Ten reluctantly admitted. "Can't be him. Also, loving the posh gravelly thing you've got going. It's very convincing."

The Warrior balked. "Convincing of _what_? This is me, no more, no less."

 _No more._ He was never going to hear those words again without thinking of the Bad Wolf. She was already invading his mind. Not that he could complain, really. There were much worse people to have haunt you, and he would be with her in the future. Not half bad, by his standards. _No, that's much better than usual, actually._

"Brave words, Dick van Dyke," Eleven sniped at the Tenth, and the taller Doctor made a face.

The Warrior hid a smirk. Bad Wolf snorted softly.

"Halt and surrender in the name of the Queen!"

And then things went from awkward to difficult.

The Warrior honestly couldn't remember the last time he was surrounded by angry knights, but he was sure that it had happened before. More than once. Such was the life of a meddlesome time-traveler. But never ever had he been in a situation that made him feel so utterly annoyed. Couldn't he be left in peace to smack his older selves for being fools? Was that too much to ask of the universe?

 _Of course it was._ So they were quickly surrounded by a band –troop?– of angry-looking knights, some of whom _stank_ of Zygon venom. The Warrior wrinkled his nose at the smell.

"Which of you is the Doctor?" demanded a knight who looked and sounded very in charge of his band of merry idiots. "The Queen of England is bewitched. I would have the Doctor's head!"

"Well, this has the makings of your _lucky_ day," groused the Warrior. He turned his gaze to Bad Wolf, who seemed totally unconcerned with this turn of events. "Can't you do something about this?"

"Me?" exclaimed Ten, face scrunching up in indignation. "Why _me_? Why don't _you_ do something?"

"Rude and not ginger, as always," Bad Wolf commented with a fond smile. How she could be fond of this version of him, the Warrior wasn't sure, but he had to appreciate her power of will. _Sandshoes_ obviously wasn't an easy man to deal with. "Yeah, I can do something. Think this'll do the trick?"

Electric bolts of gold crackled from her palms and crashed upwards to explode into a new vortex.

 _Yes, that'll do it, I suppose._

The Warrior laughed fully from deep in his chest at the expressions of horror on the knights' faces, and even more so at the way Ten and Eleven jumped.

"What in bloody hell!" Eleven cried, holding his fez down on his head. The profanity sounded wrong coming out of his mouth. "Why'd _that_ happen?"

"Beats me," admitted Ten, who had recovered from the shock much faster. "And _you're_ the one who's supposed to be remembering!"

"The memories are erasing themselves faster than I can remember them," said Eleven, who _sounded_ angry and confused but just _looked_ like an upset puppy. "I'm completely clueless."

"Got _that_ right," quipped Bad Wolf, who took her place at the Warrior's side, unconcerned with the knights, most of whom had nervously drawn their weapons and one of whom had run for the hills. "Time for some fun."

"Doctor!" a panicked, feminine voice cried out from the vortex. "Doctor, is that you?!"

"Yes, Clara, it's me!" Eleven called back, his voice taking on that soothing tone that lasted through every regeneration for the sake of his companions. "It's alright!"

The Warrior caught a glance of a warped image in the vortex: a girl, dark-haired and dark-eyed, staring down at them. Someone was at her side, but that didn't strike him as especially important. This one, this _Clara_ , she was a future companion. He could feel it. And something about her… something looked familiar. Felt familiar, like he should know her. There seemed to be a lot of that going around today. Perhaps he had met her in some past incarnation, however briefly.

"You know her?" he whispered to Bad Wolf.

"No," Bad Wolf answered. "She feels a bit odd, though. Bit… echo-y."

Echo. Yes, that was it. The familiarity. It felt like an echo of the girl.

 _Well, that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Bravo, old man, you've finally gone bonkers_ , the Warrior sniped at himself. Ten was annoying him and Eleven was making him nervous. He certainly had no patience for his _current_ self to act daft.

"What is that?" cried one of the knights, the one who was doing most of the talking. The others looked pretty nervous as well, but apparently not enough so as to demand an answer. "That thing, what witchcraft is that?!"

"Witchcraft?" Eleven's constantly moving hands froze for a moment before moving in a triumphant flurry once again. "Oh! Yes! Now that you mention it, that is definitely witchcraft! Witchy witchcraft. Er, yes, hello! Hello in there! Excuse me! Hello! Am I speaking to the… the witch of the well?"

The Warrior rolled his eyes so far back that he imagined that, were there light inside his head, he might have gotten a glance at his own sockets. "Do I _have_ to regenerate?"

"Sorry, sweetheart," Bad Wolf apologized, not sounding sorry at all. "Got to."

"It's not _that_ bad," said Ten. The Warrior ignored him.

"He means you," said another woman's voice from the vortex. That voice sounded familiar to him, but who couldn't place where or when he had heard it before.

"Me? Why am _I_ the witch?" said Clara, offended. Oh, companions, always getting riled over the small things even though they traveled in a bigger-on-the-inside-box and saved the universe with a centuries-old alien. He would never understand how that worked. Funny little humans and whatever else have you were going to be a mystery no matter how long he lived.

"Clara!" Eleven hissed at the vortex, hands wringing nervously.

"Right, sorry. Hello!"

"Clara, hi, hello." Eleven seemed rather relieved. Ten was less assured, as he kept glancing nervously at the knights. "Yes, would you mind telling these _prattling mortals_ to get themselves begone?"

"What he said," was Clara's flat order to the knights, who had picked up their weapons again and didn't look anything like they were about to 'get themselves begone.' More like they were going to skewer someone and then burn the rest of them at the stake for 'witchcraft.'

 _Smart, Doctor, very smart, choose a criminal offense that we didn't even commit as a back-up story and give us no way out of it. That was genius, that was. Bravo. Idiot._

"Might want to put a bit more feeling into it, sweetheart," Bad Wolf said. The Warrior smiled.

"Yes, a tiny bit more color," encouraged Eleven, as if he had heard Bad Wolf.

The Warrior leaned closer to Bad Wolf. "Can you influence people who aren't aware of you?"

"Nope," she answered, popping the P and rocking on her heels as she grinned at the scene.

"Right! Prattling mortals… off you… pop! Or I'll… I'll…" Clara's already stilted impression of a witch faltered for a moment, "turn you all into… frogs!"

"Ooh, _frogs_ , nice!" said Eleven, seeming genuinely impressed. He spun around to face the knights. "You heard 'er."

The knights didn't move, although they looked plenty nervous at Clara's half-hearted and completely empty threat. Clara's act may have been flimsy, but it came near to doing the trick. Odd that it hadn't sent them all running, really, but perhaps dedication to the crown really did instill them with some foolish bravery.

The Warrior wished, not for the first nor the last time since becoming involved in this mess, that the Bad Wolf would put on at least an eensy-weensy bit of a show to get them out of this disastrous situation. If she would just show herself, maybe pull that trick with the vortex again, that would send these armored idiots running. And he would savor the look on the Doctor's face –both of them– if he was right and they recognized her as a lost companion.

The Bad Wolf, however, seemed determined to let the situation run its course, for the most part. Well, he couldn't argue with a time-sentient being. Or he could, but he wouldn't. Partly because she seemed to know what she was doing and mostly because she was… her.

 _Rassilon_ , the Warrior swore. _I've only known her for an hour. She shouldn't be doing this to me._

"Doctor, what's going on?" asked the Clara girl.

"It's a timey-wimey thing," said Eleven, as if that explained everything.

"Timey what?" the Warrior sputtered, not believing that _that_ had just come from his mouth, even if it was his _future_ mouth. "Timey- _wimey_?"

" _Wibbly-wobbly_ -timey-wimey," said the Bad Wolf. The Warrior scoffed, but she gave him a tongue-in-teeth smile that quailed any sarcastic comment from him.

Ten grimaced at the Warrior, shaking his head vehemently. "I, uh, I _really_ don't know where he gets it."

"Oh, I think _I_ might," said the Warrior, who gave Bad Wolf a sharp look. She shook her head and giggled.

"Don't blame _me_ ," she laughed. "You started it, sort of. Oh!" Her head swung around and she looked into the distance, eyes flaring gold at something the Warrior couldn't see. "Zygon Queen's coming. She's not really a– oh, I'll explain later. I'll meet you at the Tower, sweetheart! And don't take the Granddad comment too harshly."

The Warrior blinked. "What?"

Bad Wolf winked at him and flickered out of existence.

"I said–" began Ten, but the Warrior cut him off.

"Not you," he said. "The Queen is coming."

"Oh," Ten groaned, gritting his teeth. "Great. _Just great_."

The queen made the entrance of… well, of a queen. A very unpleasant one who wanted them all locked in the Tower.

The Warrior had met many different Elizabeths and many different queens throughout his travels, and he was usually defending them, but he decided that this one, Zygon or otherwise, was one he wouldn't save from assassination if the timelines could survive without her.

 _And would those two shut up about kissing the Zygon? Rassilon!_

 **oooOOOooo**

Rose flashed into existence at the top of the Tower and fell to her hands and knees, scraping her palms against the stone. Her stomach rolled heavily, and she barely managed not to gag up her lunch. That might only have been because she hadn't eaten any lunch, but the point was that she _didn't_ vomit on the roof of a 1500's prison tower. That was a point in her favor, wasn't it? A success to _not_ fail. Not that she cared at the moment.

Ha. _Moment_. The Moment. Ha. _Ha_ -ha. Funny.

"Stop it," Rose rasped at herself, clenching her fists against the stone even as the pressure snagged her skin and drew hot pinpricks of blood. "Stop it right now. You're acting crazy. Mad."

"You're in shock. Don't scold yourself for a natural reaction."

Rose looked up to see a stranger who looked far too much like herself.

The woman was pale-skinned, with brown hair and brown eyes, and all that Rose could think was that it was like looking into a warped mirror. She didn't look to be more than thirty, if even that, and far more delicate in her features than Rose had ever been, but the resemblance was uncanny. Nothing specific that Rose could pinpoint, just a general shape and posture that was so much alike to her own. If Rose and John had been able to have children, this woman… this could have been the result.

"It tends to happen to traumatized people who have been dragged backwards in time through the multiverse without much warning," the Moment said. Her accent was posher than Rose's by a far mark, but something about the her voice was even similar to Rose's. "That, and you just saw the man you love in three different forms, one of which was identical to that of your recently-deceased husband's. You're bound to be a bit upset."

Ripples blurred the edges of Rose's vision until fat tears slipped away and rolled down her cheeks, leaving salty tracks in their wake. She sobbed, burying her face in her bloody hands, rocking back and forth. If the Moment weren't fully aware of what Rose was feeling, she might have scoffed at the emotional display, but she knew better. She knew that a dam was cracking. Rose needed this if she was going to move on to the next task.

"Sorry," Rose said, her voice thick with tears and muffled by her palms. She let her hands fall away and she sat up. Tears were still welling up and falling away. Her blood-stained hands shook. Her bottom lip quivered.

The Moment stepped forward and kneeled so that she was level with Rose. "Now, you listen to me, Rose Tyler. This can't be undone. You've already passed the point of no return. So have a good cry and then pull yourself together. Choices have consequences, my dear. I'm turning a timeline into shadow because this timeline is _wrong_. Right now, you are doing what _should_ have been done."

"That makes about much sense as most time-travel nonsense," Rose replied with a sniffle. "Also, now that I think to mention in, thanks for makin' me young again. What am I, twenty-two? And blonde. Real blonde. I like it."

Rolling her eyes, the Moment crossed her arms. " _Now_ who thinks they're so impressive?"

Rose scoffed, but smiled. "Hey, last time I saw myself, I was wrinkled and brunette. Well, grey, actually."

"Fair enough," the Moment agreed with a shrug.

She took Rose's scraped-up hands, pulled her up into a standing position, and turned her around so that they both stood on the edge of the roof, facing out to a grey sky that seemed endless.

"Listen, Rose Tyler," the Moment whispered in Rose's ear. "You are alive. You are tied to the Doctor until the day he dies. You are the Bad Wolf and the world is yours to roam. _You_ are _free_."

The Moment disintegrated into gold sparks that skittered against Rose's clothes and then wisped into nothingness.

Rose looked out at the dull Earth sky. Wind tousled her already messy hair and she took in a deep breath of the cool air. It was a bit thick from the earlier rain, but she didn't mind. After so long in the alternate universe, everything in this universe was like… like coming home after a long trip. The smells, the colors, the _feel_ of everything was just so right. Not to mention… not to mention the Doctor. Now, _that_ was _right_. That made the fire in her bones settle into embers and stop sparking. That drew the air gently into her lungs instead of sharply like ice. She felt like she had finally broken the surface of the water and taken a gasp of air for the first time in years. She felt free. She felt like she could _fly_.

 _You are with the Doctor. You are free._

The Bad Wolf threw her head back and _howled_.

 **ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo**

 **Thanks for reading. Reviews are appreciated.**


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